surgent wrote:My point was that I believe there are many, many kids who have the maturity and skill to pull off feats such as this (or similar), but since most will never have the circumstances (cash and related) to attempt the dream as children, we must view Abby's situation as highly unique, and to not judge "all the rest" as lazy dorito-eating blobs because they didn't share Abby's circumstances.

Ah, got it thanks.

There's still the ethical issue of allowing your child (<18yo) to do this, no matter the situation.

Agreed, as there is for sending a child off to war.

You can be impressed and heartened by Abby all you want.

Why thank you. I'm not organizing a parade mind you.

She seems like a good kid. But don't lose sight of the surrounding details. Had her folks said "no, you can wait until you're 18 to sail solo", would we have thought less of her?

\

We wouldn't know about her so yes, clearly we would have thought less of her.

DMT

We don't send children off to war. We send 18+ yo adults off to war.

Last line: you misconstrue the logic. The correct answer is: we would not have thought of her at all. You can only have an opinion about something/one you are aware of.

Dingus Milktoast wrote:And we DO send children off to war, and have done so since the inception of our nation.DMT

It seems to be something we try to avoid doing nowadays:
"In 2004 the Director of Military Personnel Policy for the US Army acknowledged in a letter to Human Rights Watch that nearly 60 17-year old US soldiers had been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003 and 2004.[54] The Department of Defense subsequently stated that “the situations were immediately rectified and action taken to prevent recurrence”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_use_of_children

zodis wrote:So what if she makes some money from the adventure? What's wrong with that? I hope she makes plenty. It's not like she's selling drugs or robbing banks. I think she's offering a positive role model, not like another Hollywood strumpet.

So what if other kids with less money could have accomplished what she did? The fact is that she did and they didn't.

The ironic thing is many climbers spend countless hours dreaming up ways to make money from their adventure - guiding, writing, making videos, ski patrol, SAR, administration, etc.

Climbers going off to do some rad FA in the hinterlands somewhere, doing fund raising and getting mfg's to donate gear, etc.

Funding mechanisms. Whatever.

DMT

All your examples are of a climber putting forth the effort to raise money. Guiding, writing, etc. Takes work. In this case, Daddy handed his child a yacht. There is a difference. If she saved her babysitting money and bought a boat, I would be impressed.

Dingus Milktoast wrote:Allow me to explain - I have daughters; several. No sons.

Me too (ages 19/21), but there are way better role models for young girls/women than a girl who is given a $X00,000 yacht, money to outfit and provision the yacht, and has her own publicist. As my kids were growing up there were way too many of those "role models" floating around for my taste.

If either of my daughters wanted to sail solo around the world, I would absolutely encourage them to pursue their dream, but I wouldn't point to Abby as the way to do it. And I wouldn't hand her a yacht (that's an easy statement, cuz I couldn't afford it). She may be a good role model in the abstract sense (yes, "pursue your dream"), but she's not, IMO, a good role model in reality. Too much bad baggage in that story (in fairness, a lot, if not all, comes from the parents -- Abby may be a true adventurer at heart -- but she is under some bad outside influence).

kozman18 wrote:there are way better role models for young girls/women than a girl who is given a $X00,000 yacht, money to outfit and provision the yacht, and has her own publicist. As my kids were growing up there were way too many of those "role models" floating around for my taste.

If either of my daughters wanted to sail solo around the world, I would absolutely encourage them to pursue their dream, but I wouldn't point to Abby as the way to do it. And I wouldn't hand her a yacht (that's an easy statement, cuz I couldn't afford it). She may be a good role model in the abstract sense (yes, "pursue your dream"), but she's not, IMO, a good role model in reality. Too much bad baggage in that story (in fairness, a lot, if not all, comes from the parents -- Abby may be a true adventurer at heart -- but she is under some bad outside influence).

Very well said kozman.

Little girl whose daddy gave her a yacht certainly isn't the ideal role model. That she isn't selling drugs or robbing banks is about as low a threshold as one could create.

Agreed -- it's hard to know anything about this young girl, as a person. But, the same is true of most role models -- all you see is the persona they project (hey, Tiger, you listening?). I "rank" them by this persona. As for my kids, they are old enough now to emulate anyone they want, so my duties with respect to screening role models are over.

I guess the point is that I hope my kids become role models for others. I don't think handing them a yacht would be a good way to get them there, regardless of their dreams and my monetary means.

Dingus Milktoast wrote:Allow me to explain - I have daughters; several. No sons. I firmly believe that teenage girls need role models just as do teenage boys. But what sorts of role models are there?

I have one daughter who's still a teenager. I don't suppose I've always been consistent about this topic--when she was little I bought (!) and read her Merrick Johhnson's book about climbing Denali at 12, and I didn't make any negative comments. My girl has more recently become passionate about mountains and has, by putting in tons of hours on her own initiative, made herself a pretty good rock climber. As a trad leader she has a bit of that teenage faith in immortality we can all remember, and this has caused me a few anxious moments. And I'm sure if something bad were to happen, others would blame me and I would blame myself for giving her a long leash.

The leash isn't unlimited, though. Recently she declared an interest in joining a rather ill-conceived expedition to Mt. St. Elias. I was pretty unsupportive. It seemed to me that, to her, St. Elias was just a shiny bauble, just as it is to those SPers who post lame mountain pages about it every so often. My feeling is that if you are going to take a 3 or 5% risk of death, ok, but it had better be some deeply held, long-term, mature goal from within yourself. I'm not sure teenagers can reliably determine if something really matters that much to them. Anyway, if it does matter that much, pushing through a few headwinds from nervous parents can be part of the challenge. We don't always have to "support" them, and it may not be good if we do.

One thing I've tried to instill--and this is not going to be a sentiment shared by all on this site--is that in general, climbing is not a source of "accomplishments" in life. Mountains are wonderful and have much to give us, but if you are a talented person and you channel all those talents to climbing till you die doing it, you may be wasting yourself.

A book I recently gave her, which she devoured, was Gabrielle Walker's "Snowball Earth." The scientific saga it chronicles was achieved mostly by people who were incredibly hard and tough and adventurous outdoorsmen (Mawson, Hoffman, etc), but ultimately the adventure and the physical challenge were a side salad. The main course was not self-discovery, but true advancement of human knowledge.